>>>>> "Pete" == Pete Chown <1 234 cx> writes:
>> As a practical matter touching on Fedora, gcj remains the "best" way
>> to deliver java applications on a free system. In my opinion, other
>> free VMs have unacceptable performance, unacceptable platform
>> coverage, or both.
Pete> Have you tried ikvm? Rhino runs with it successfully, so it must be
Pete> fairly complete. I haven't tried anything more demanding, though.
I'm aware of IKVM but haven't really used it.
In terms of ability to run applications, the important thing to
remember is: all the free VMs can run the same things. Writing a java
VM is no big deal -- that's why we have 20 of them. The hard part is
the libraries, and basically all the free VMs use GNU Classpath
(usually with minor VM-specific tweaks).
Pete> One nice thing about ikvm is that it's a JIT (or rather, uses a JIT,
Pete> either Mono or .NET). This means that in use, it is much more similar to
Pete> other Java implementations.
Yes, deployment is simpler in this scenario.
>From my POV, at least at the moment (based on the benchmarks I've seen
-- is that enough qualification? :-), Mono+IKVM falls into the
"unacceptable performance" slot.
For "jdk-style" deployment, especially if complete platform coverage
doesn't matter to you, at the moment I think I would recommend
JikesRVM.
I remembered another reason we like gcj -- you can debug gcj-compiled
code. You have to use gdb (which has its pros and cons), but at least
you can do it. AFAIK the other free VMs lack any way to debug the
code you're running. (It would be great to be wrong about this, since
it would solve a problem we have with eclipse-on-free-VMs.)
Tom